Timemaster

by Robert L. Forward

  "The laser beam is poking a hole in it!" said Randy in surprise.

  "Steve Wisneski tells me it probably feels like cold toes in bed," said Siritha. "Any positive energy absorbed by the Silverhair nullifies an equivalent amount of negative thermal energy in its body, making it cold."

  "It's through!" came a voice over the intersuit radio.

  Randy and Siritha jetted over to the other Silverhair a short distance away in space. On the other side of that Silverhair was a copy of the instrument package. There was a spot of red laser light on it. The laser spot started to grow in size, while developing a dark spot in the middle. Soon it was a large ring of red light, slowly growing in radius as it enlarged the hole made in the Silverhair. The technician monitoring the operation of the instrument package motioned to Randy to come over.

  "The monitor screen is showing the view through a telescope boresighted with the laser," he said as Randy came to a halt next to him.

  "It's Hiroshi Tanaka!" said Randy, looking in the monitor.

  "A hundred meters closer in that view," said the tech.

  "When will it be big enough for me to go through?" asked Randy.

  "It isn't easy for the Silverhair to expand," said Siritha, who had followed Randy over. "The maximum growth rate seems to go as the square of the diameter of the warp. The first few centimeters is easy. Getting it up to a meter takes a couple of hours."

  "I only need a foot—a half meter at most," Randy said.

  "Philippe warned me about that," said Siritha. "I have firm instructions that the warpgate must exceed one meter before any human can attempt to pass through. Come back this afternoon and we'll be ready."

  WHEN RANDY returned later, Philippe and a camera crew came with him. So far, the news' organizations had been kept away. Tomorrow, however, the evening news would have videotapes of Randy passing through a warpgate, his head coming out of one end while, a hundred meters away, his feet were still going in the other end.

  "Put your jetpack on inertial," said Hiroshi Tanaka. "I'll feed it the coordinates." A few seconds later he said, "Increase the velocity control when you are ready, Mr. Hunter."

  Randy reached up to his chestpack and carefully moved a control. Tiny gas jets fired and he started moving slowly down the hollow tube of laser light toward the hole in the nearest Silverhair.

  "I can see laser light on one of your elbows," reported Hiroshi over the suit link. Randy quickly pulled his arms in closer to his body.

  "I'm getting nearer ..." Randy reported as he approached the Silverhair. "Entering the near end ... Tunnel only two meters long ... Everything fine ... no funny sensations. Head out other side ... clear!" He moved the velocity control back and the jetpack fired again to bring him to a halt just a short distance away from the instrument package.

  "Are you OK, Mr. Hunter?" asked Hiroshi over the radio suit link as he collapsed the laser beam.

  said the Silverhair in what sounded like relief.

  "More than that, Hiroshi," said Randy. "Exhilarated would be a better word. How about setting up the next warpgate between here and Earth? I've got a new bride I need to pay attention to."

  "That's going to be a little more difficult, Mr. Hunter," said Hiroshi. "We need to bud off a new Silverhair from this one and take it to Earth first."

  "I guess I'll just have to take the slow way home, then," Randy sighed.

  Philippe gave a snort, then chided him. "In the olden days of space travel—before the invention of the negmatter drive—people would have thought three days from the asteroid belt to the Earth was a pretty fast trip."

  "I guess I'm just spoiled," said Randy, nodding his head in agreement.

  Suddenly a large white sphere moved by Randy's helmet, spiraled around him, and stuck to one of his elbows.

  came the voice of the Silverhair over their radio suit links.

  Randy just floated there, looking bewildered at the softball-sized plastic-sponge sphere clinging to his elbow. Philippe reached over, plucked the ball from Randy's arm, and threw it back at the Silverhair. In the vacuum and weightlessness of space, the lightweight ball moved as fast and as straight as a hardball.

  At first, Randy was concerned that the ball of normal-matter plastic would touch the Silverhair and hurt it, but as the ball approached the Silverhair, the alien stretched out a number of silvery tendrils to meet it. Sparks flew from the ends of the silvery threads to the ball, accompanied by a loud burst of static from the radio. The multitude of threads backed away and got control of the electrostatically charged foam sphere in a backwards scooping motion. Then, with a continuous whipping motion, the tendrils fired the ball back at a human—Siritha this time. Siritha expertly fielded the ball and threw it back at the Silverhair. Hiroshi was next. He reached for a high one and expertly tossed it back under one leg.

  yelled the Silverhair in excitement, and fired the ball back at Hiroshi again, almost out of his reach. Hiroshi was up to the challenge and the poof-ball was soon back on its way to the Silverhair. The next thing Randy knew, the sponge ball was coming straight at him. The ball turned out to be easy to catch, because the electrostatic charge it gained from each zapping interaction with the Silverhair almost pulled it to his waiting fingertips. He wasn't prepared for the static spark, however, and shook his hand in surprise after attempting the catch. The poof-ball sailed out of his hand over his head, and with nothing to stop it, kept on moving. Randy turned his back on the group and jetted off to retrieve the ball.

  "Po-o-o-r Mr. Hunter!" came a chorus of voices from the three other humans.

  ZAP!!! Randy was struck in the rear by what felt like a bolt of lightning. "Yeow!" he yelled, and turned around indignantly.

  came a tiny laugh in the voice of the Silverhair. Randy looked at the large alien, still many meters away in the distance. It was looking as innocent as it could, considering it was nothing but a faceless ball of silver threads. Then he noticed two tiny, disembodied silver threads tiptoeing rapidly away through space, like pixie toes dipping down through the surface of a pond.

  "Zap-the-trainer is its favorite game," said Philippe with a suppressed laugh.

  "Just who is training whom?" asked Randy as he jetted back with the poof-ball. His next throw had a vicious speed on it, but the Silverhair was more than up to the catch.

  After a few more zaps, one inflicted on Philippe, Randy had to call a halt to the poof-ball game.

  "My jetpack is nearly out of fuel," he reported. Siritha was just catching the ball, so instead of throwing it back, she crumpled it up and stuffed it out of sight in a chestpack pocket.

  said the Silverhair plaintively.

  "No ball," she said firmly.

  said the Silverhair, changing the subject but wanting to keep the humans around.

  "How much fuel do you have, Mr. Hunter?" asked Siritha.

  "Eighth of a tank," said Randy, looking down at the telltales in the neck of his helmet.

  "Enough for a short dance. I'll slave your nav system to mine." Siritha punched some buttons on her chestpack. Within a few seconds, Randy found his jetpack firing short bursts that brought him closer to the Silverhair. The lively beat of "La Cucaracha" came out over the radio waves from Siritha's audio chip, while the jetpacks of the four humans moved them in a slow circle around the dancing Silverhair, and the humans jerkily moved their arms and legs to the beat. Over the trumpets and rhythm section of the orchestra could be heard the strange melodic radio voice of the Silverhair, singing to the music in a still undeciphered tongue.

  <>

  RANDY leaned back in his office chair at Reinhold headquarters and put his tiny size-four feet up on his desk. He gave a bored sigh and looked grumpily over at Alan Davidson, sitting quietly on the couch across the room.

  "It sure is easy running a company with monopoly control over a bunch of new technologies that generate more cash flow than you can spend
," said Randy.

  "Within a year you should be the richest man on Earth," said Alan.

  "One down," muttered Randy to himself, thinking of the goals that he had set himself. He had once thought they were all impossible, but very shortly he would be the richest man in the solar system, and soon after that he could be traveling to the stars ... if he wanted to.

  "What?" asked Alan.

  "Nothing ..." said Randy. He thought for a while longer, men pulled his feet off the desk and sat up.

  "Order a new chair for the desk," he said to Alan.

  "Certainly," said Alan. "Is the lift broken on that chair?"

  "Nope," said Randy. "This chair is too small to fit you. Running Reinhold Astroengineering Company isn't any fun anymore. No challenge. I'm turning this job over to you."

  "What are you going to do?" asked Alan.

  "Spend all the money you make for me," said Randy. "I'm going to build me an interstellar spacecraft and explore the stars!"

  Chapter 5

  Ad Astra!

  A FEW months later, Randy was at the Reinhold headquarters building being given a briefing by Andrew Pope. Randy had hired Andrew away from Boeing-Lockheed to be the new head of the recently formed Interstellar Transport and Trade Division of Reinhold Astroengineering Company. It wasn't hard. Andrew had been in charge of the Advanced Propulsion Department at Boeing-Lockheed for almost two decades, but because of low budgets, the only thing he had been allowed to produce during his long professional career was a large pile of paper studies. When Randy offered Andrew the chance to build a real interstellar spacecraft, Andrew jumped on the next plane to Jerseyork.

  Andrew Pope was a typical aerospace engineer-manager, in his early fifties, with a slightly overweight, stocky build that exuded authority and competence. He wore a conservative suit of expensive brown silk in the new short-tail cutaway style, with a conservative brown-on-brown choker and matching hair ribbon. His only concession to jewelry was his MIT school 'ring on his right ear. His Paul Revere was slightly unusual; instead of letting his forelocks grow long, then brushing them back in a standard pompadour, he had short bangs hanging down to help cover a balding forehead.

  In the room with Randy and Andrew were three transferees from other divisions of Reinhold Astroengineering Company, Hiroshi Tanaka, Steve Wisneski, and Elena Polikova, and a new hire picked by Andrew Pope from the long list of competent professionals Andrew had gotten to know over the years. He was C.C. Wong, a thin, reclusive aerospace engineer and test pilot Andrew had hired away from the Chinese Space Agency. He was proudly wearing the form-fitting bright-red jumpsuit and black-leather zipper boots that constituted the (unofficial uniform of a space test-pilot.

  "There's no question we can build you an interstellar vehicle, Mr. Hunter," said Andrew. "It will just take some time to build one that we can be sure is reliable enough to get you there safely."

  "We've already demonstrated the negmatter drive at one gee." complained Randy. "It's just a matter of running it for a year instead of a few days. It never runs out of fuel and has no parts to wear out or break down."

  "I'm afraid you are not aware that the negmatter drive failed on our first trip," interjected Hiroshi Tanaka apologetically. "One of the electrostatic power supplies failed halfway back to Earth. Fortunately, I was able to switch it with one of the transverse-direction power supplies that weren't being utilized and we were able to continue the mission."

  "I don't recall that!" Randy said, sitting up in his chair.

  "You were asleep at the time, sir," said Hiroshi. "Mr. Pilcher made the decision not to tell you, for fear you would worry."

  "Thanks," Randy said sarcastically, slumping back down.

  "Mr. Wong and I have outlined a design and test program to thoroughly test out the drive electronics," said Hiroshi. "We can assure you a high-reliability system, but it will take many months of test flights by Mr. Wong before we know how reliable it really is."

  Steve Wisneski's mustache twitched in irritation as he listened to Hiroshi. "The electronics are the easy part," he insisted. "What are you going to do about the most unreliable part of the whole system, the Silverhair itself?"

  Andrew, who had been coping with Steve's personality for only a few weeks, was nevertheless on top of the situation. "I agree that a living creature is usually not the most reliable component in a complex system, Steve. But would you mind giving us a summary of the tests the Silverhair trainers have carried out?"

  "Well ..." started Steve reluctantly. "Siritha and the rest of the trainers now have considerable experience with the Silverhairs." He paused.

  "And?" prompted Andrew.

  "They get better with training," admitted Steve. "At first, they weren't housebroken. They would void a small ball of negative shit whenever and wherever they wanted. That's OK when they're floating all by themselves out in space, but if they did that while they were suspended in the hold of a spacecraft under acceleration, the ball of negative shit would nullify its way out through the hull and leave a nice big hole where the outside vacuum could pour into the ship and fill it full of nothing, making it difficult to breathe. Now, however, one of them has been kept in an electrostatic suspension under high centrifugal gees for over fourteen months and hasn't broken training."

  "And they never seem to forget," added Andrew, turning to Randy.

  "Never forget?" asked Randy, slightly puzzled.

  "Interconnected elephant clones," said Steve, as if that explained it. "Like an elephant, once they learn a routine, they can repeat the performance again after many months off. Like a clone, if you bud a new Silverhair from an old one, the new one has all the memory and capability of the old one. And since they are all interconnected through space warps, once one Silverhair learns something, soon all of them have the ability. As I said, interconnected elephant clones."

  "How many Silverhair clones do we have now?" asked Randy.

  "I've lost count," said Steve. "A couple of dozen, I guess. We have four pairs busy as warpgates between Earth orbit and various portions of the asteroid belt, three pairs in a triangle between the Earth, Moon, and Mars, and a number being milked for silver shit balls."

  "I hope they aren't using Bob Pilcher's rock-music shock technique," said Randy, wincing. "That'd be cruel."

  "Siritha wouldn't allow it, anyway," said Steve. "Instead she has induced a Pavlovian-type controlled-reflex response in the Silverhairs that accomplishes the same thing whenever she broadcasts the ringing of a bell—in this case, Big Ben chiming one o'clock. The carillon tune gets the Silverhairs ready, and at the stroke of one it ejects a silvery blob. Two strokes gets you two blobs, but the second one is tiny compared to the first. The optimum output is one large blob of some twenty tons of negmatter every eighteen hours. It's an elephant-sized, string-feathered goose that lays silvery eggs."

  "A string-leaved plant that drops silvery fruits," retorted Randy. "Don't forget, I want to get that international plant patent! You can't patent wild animals that you find, but you can patent a new plant variety you have discovered."

  "Good luck on that one, Randy," said Steve. "Now that Oscar Barkham has bought his way into the presidency of the Animal Rescue Front, you're going to have a tough time getting that patent issued."

  "At least it's better than having him in Congress where he can throw laws at me," said Randy. "It sure didn't take the voters long to throw him out after he had another ZED-flashback attack during that Nancy Queen interview on national television." He looked around the room. "Anything else new that we've learned about the Silverhairs?" he asked.

  Elena Polikova raised her hand. It had a videodisk in it. "I have some data," she said, walking to the front of the conference table and putting the videodisk in the machine. Elena, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Moscow on an exchange visit to Reinhold Research Laboratories, was a regal-looking dowager in a shapeless grey dress, with sharp grey eyes in an aging face and her greying hair in a Mongolian bun.

  "M
y colleagues at Moscow University and Glavcosmos do experiments with Silverhair you loan to us," said Elena, turning on the video. "Instead of opening up warpgate with laser beam, we have been using physical probe with tiny television on end. Let me show you."

  The videoscreen on the wall showed some people floating in space suits near a Silverhair in high Earth orbit. The suits were of Socialist Eco-Bloc design. One figure carried a probe consisting of a small box with a short telescoping rod sticking out from it. There was a tiny TV camera built into the end of the rod. The cosmonaut pointed the rod at the television camera and the view switched to that of the tiny camera, showing another cosmonaut pointing a large television camera at the screen. The view switched back and the cosmonaut showed how the probe could extend out about five meters and then back again.

  "If we send probe straight into a Silverhair," said Elena, "it always comes out parent Silverhair—the Silverhair it bud from. No matter what direction probe goes in—it comes out same Silverhair, just in different direction. This probe instrument is just like laser beam you use. Probe, however, have more capability than laser beam."

  Elena continued to narrate as the video switched to an animated sequence that showed the operation of the probe bending at an angle inside a cartoon Silverhair. "Probe can turn at angle once inside and continue to extend from tip. It always comes out somewhere, but not from parent Silverhair. We take picture with TV from inside tunnel, then withdraw probe." She stopped the animation segment and switched to a still picture of a star pattern with a distant red sun in one corner.

  "This is one of first pictures we take. We put picture of stars in computer. Computer match pattern with stars in memory. It is view from near Betelgeuse."

  "Betelgeuse!" exclaimed Randy. "That's light-years away!"

  "Six hundred fifty light-years," said Elena dryly. "Here is other picture." The screen was suddenly ablaze with tens of thousands of stars.